Seagate SV35 Seagate Briefing: Optimizing Surveillance DVR Reliability (108K,

As the world’s leading supplier of hard drives, Seagate Technology knows

well that all customers and storage applications are not alike. Sometimes

the unique requirements of hard drive applications are intuitively obvious.

For example, the storage needs of an enterprise database application are

clearly different from those of a portable MP3 player stowed in a pocket

while jogging.

Yet both systems use drives for storage and, though vastly different in size,

they share a significant amount of technology in common. Other storage

applications are much more subtle in their differences, while still having

important unique characteristics that must be acknowledged to ensure

storage products deliver optimal value, performance and reliability.

Such subtle differences can be found in the growing hard drive market in

the video surveillance industry. Here drive use is expanding at a tremendous

rate, reflecting the flexibility and advanced performance of hard drive storage

over legacy tape-based systems. According to IMS Research, the estimated

worldwide market for video surveillance equipment was US$6.6 billion at the

factory level in 2006,and is expected to grow to an estimated US$11.6 billion

by 2011. Nearly one-third of the estimated revenue would be from hard drive-

based surveillance DVRs and NVRs.

1

While the adoption of hard drives over tape in video surveillance systems is

reaching 100 percent, there is significant room for improvement in system

interoperability, with reliability continuing to be an industry-wide challenge.

Many customers, having moved to digital surveillance systems and drive-

based storage, revel in the improved capacity, performance and flexibility

but are disappointed by unexpectedly high failure rates. In addition, they

hunger for increased performance to take advantage of the trends towards

megapixel recording and intelligent video analytics.

Seagate has been working with customers who seek higher levels of

performance and reliability, and has identified three key approaches to

achieving that goal: ongoing education, improved practices in system design

for performance and reliability, and deployment of purpose-built surveillance

drives and related controls.

Seagate Briefing: Optimizing

Video Surveillance System

Reliability and Performance

Technology Paper

1 Source: J.P. Freeman Co. 2006 Worldwide Video Surveillance Market Report, March 1, 2006